Time for Changing the Time

The days have gotten increasing longer this past month as we gained an average of 2 ½ minutes of daylight per day. At Cedar Rapids’ latitude, there is a 6-hour variance in daylight between winter and summer. Of course, daylight savings time doesn’t really give is more daylight. By setting our clocks back an hour, we are just shifting the early morning daylight to the evening when we are more likely to be awake and thus able to utilize it. If we didn’t shift our clocks our morning twilight in late June would be about 4:00 AM rather than 5:00 AM. I don’t know about you, but I’m usually sleeping at that hour so I would be “wasting” daylight!

Daylight savings time arrives at 2:00 AM, Sunday March 12, 2017.

It seems nearly every year at around the time change, people talk about abolishing daylight savings time. And nearly every year, nobody does anything about it! Arizona and Hawaii do not follow daylight savings time. That’s understandable, as the closer you are to the equator the less variance there is in daylight throughout the year.

I’m a fan of daylight savings time and the long summer evenings. It feels like you have more time to do things. In the depth of winter, my wife sometimes like to get out of her work close and go straight to bed clothes at 6:00 in the evening. Now that makes for shorter days! In my first career, I worked as grocery manufacturer’s rep and sold charcoal, among many other products. The charcoal industry used to say the outdoor grilling begins and ends with daylight savings time. So there’s another reason to embrace the time change. Bring on the burgers!